Contemporary resistive movements and campaigns (e.g., Serbia’s Otpor, Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement, and Occupy Central in Hong Kong), while combatant in the context of their own locality, appear comfortable with or accommodating of the wider conventions of the global status quo. They generally call for the restitution of functional democratic processes and for more utilizable and equitable access to capital, resources, and the market place. While hostile in appearance, they aspire, for the most part, towards the normative. This is true in the Korean context as well, with social movements and organizations ranged against North Korea seeking a more conventional form of governance, governmentality, and civic spatiality in place of Pyongyang’s arcane and apparently anachronistic political and social landscape.

This, however, was not always the case. As one of the last vestiges of a previous mode of political possibility, North Korea appears as an outlier on the contemporary political map, but Pyongyang once engaged restive, angry, and hostile dreamers of potential and utopian futures to its aspirational calls for world revolution. There was a time when Pyongyang’s Sun attracted those who conceived of an alternate future, however dysfunctional, dystopian, and hostile it now seems to our reductive, myopic present. The processes, spaces, and vectors for these attractions and aspirations are of course as seldom discussed or researched as the angry and hostile dreamers behind them. This all makes Benjamin Young‘s newly published piece at Japan Focus, “Juche in the United States: The Black Panther Party’s Relations with North Korea,” so very welcome.

Eldridge Cleaver in 1968 | Image: US News and World Report/Wikipedia

Young recounts through careful analysis of the Black Panther’s own Party Newspaper (“The Black Panther”), North Korean publications, and materials from the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project and North Korean International Documentation Project, an extraordinary moment of connection in which the once most radical and political African-American movement engaged with Pyongyang in the joint enterprise of anti-colonialism and liberation politics. The journeying of Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, Bryon Booth, and others to Algiers and then to Pyongyang is described by Young in a manner which brings this search for revolutionary, liberated space coherently and vividly to the mind of the reader. The excited reprinting of various writings and political productions authored by Kim Il-sung in the Black Panthers own publicity and news materials, in what must have been seen by Pyongyang as a happy and perhaps accidentally discovered opportunity to inculcate the Juche idea within American political consciousness, also appears a rebroadcasting of this revolutionary space–a promised land of Liberation. The Black Panthers reproduction of Pyongyang’s political and cultural possibility–free from capital, colonialism, and racism–brings to mind a mirror image of Christine Hong’s understanding of the contemporary de-legitimization of North Korea in the Liberal weltanschaung by defector testimonies and narratives as “weaponized cultural production.”

Far from being a unique moment, Young, using the evidence at hand, builds an analysis of this moment and interaction which is demonstrative of the frequency at times of these revolutionary connections; from Ché Guevara to the Irish Republican Army, those that felt they shared a common liberatory sense with Pyongyang appeared to find their way there. However, as not only the wider streams of history, Young’s piece shows this was to be but a brief moment in the revolutionary sun for North Korea. The relationship with Pyongyang diminished as Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver’s authority and connection to the more local American Black Panther Party diminished, beset by disruptions generated by the hostility of the CIA and challenged by the necessary accommodations made by activists on the ground with pre-existing structures of society and governance in their home communities (uncompromisingly and perhaps unhelpfully described by Cleaver as “working within the white man’s exploitative system”). Pyongyang, as always a careful assessor of power and potential utility in its partners, judged that Cleaver and the Panthers in their reduced and contested state would no longer be the useful disruptor or connection they once could have been.

While Young’s piece addresses only the briefest of periods in the now extensive narrative of North Korea’s international engagement and interaction, the narrative described serves as a vital element for holistic and functional conceptions of Pyongyang’s governmental self-perception within the wider frameworks of international engagement. In a sense it talks to the counter-narratives focused on North Korean ideology that seek to mark it with the de-legitimizing stain of racism and ethno-fascism, at the same time as noting the uncomfortableness of those involved with the conceptions of race and ethnicity encountered in 1970s Pyongyang.

For this writer perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the entire exchange described by Young’s work is the transparent lack of real analytic connection between Pyongyang’s Juche texts and thought and their audience within the Black Panther Party. The Party’s newspaper simply reprints verbatim in translation the North Korean narrative with no exegesis and unpacking, but perhaps this is the key lesson of Cleaver and Black Panther’s exercise. As more contemporary analysts such as BR Myers would have it, the Juche idea and principles they encountered amounted merely to aspirations and assertions devoid of real content, analysis, or systematic form because they were ultimately untranslatable, a tendency as true in 2015 as the Cleavers found it arriving in Pyongyang on September 11, 1969.

From an @mbcnews report on who voted to overturn South Korea’s anti-adultery law (and who did not); a screenshot from @Dest_Pyongyang’s Twitter feed. | Image: Sino-NK

“Shigak” (시각), or “perspective,” is a multilingual data collection effort that uses Twitter to curate sources dealing in key political, social, and economic issues on South Korea. Each monthly issue takes only the most important tweets posted by Sino-NK analysts under the hashtag #시각 and augments them with essential annotations and a small dose of concentrated analysis.

Shigak is edited by Steven Denney and Christopher Green. Back issues can be found on the dedicated page. All users of Twitter are encouraged to adopt the hashtag and take part in the project.

(Not) Legislating Morality: #Shigak no. 20

by Sino-NK

Summary | This issue of Shigak highlights key stories and domestic political developments in South Korea between February and March. This means tweets and analysis of anti-Park leaflets scattered by activists; news of Ambassador Lippert’s assailant; a populist airport proposal; missile launches in response to military drills; bureaucratic waste and mismanagement; efforts to stoke the flames of nationalism via flag raising ceremonies; and the momentous striking down of Korea’s anti-adultery law at the fifth attempt.

By-elections are slated for districts of Seoul, Seongnam, Incheon and Gwangju on April 29. These elections will mark Moon Jae-in’s first electoral test since becoming party chair of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD). During the leadership race, which followed a string of poor election performances, Moon promised to create a party capable of winning elections. He chose not to use the controversial “strategic nomination (전략공천)” process to parachute preferred candidates into the by-election races; instead, the NPAD held primaries for all three ridings.

In the Seoul Gwanak-gu race, ousted United Progressive Party (UPP) lawmaker Lee Sang-gu is running as an independent — Lee’s former UPP colleague Kim Mi-hee is running in Seongnam, a relative stronghold of the hard left. Both are running in the districts they represented in the National Assembly prior to the dissolution of the UPP. NPAD elder statesman (and former Minister of Justice) Chun Jung-bae, who recently left the NPAD, announced his candidacy in the Gwangju race.

The NPAD is projected to do relatively well; certainly, President Park’s low approval ratings favor the opposition party, as does the tendency of voters to use by-elections to send a message to incumbent administrations. However, the opposition remains highly divided, and the presence of former UPP lawmakers on the docket won’t help NPAD candidates unite the progressive vote.

Leaflets of one sort or another have been controversial in South Korea for years. Most of the controversy stems from anti-North Korea activists attempting to float anti-Kim regime leaflets by balloon across the DMZ. However, between February 25 and 28 some South Korean individuals also scattered leaflets attacking President Park. Most featured comical sketches of the president and written criticism of her policies. Dropping the leaflets from tall buildings, the act self-consciously harks back to the 1980s, when the target was the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan.

A group called “People Yearning for Democracy” [민주주의를 염원하는 사람들] took responsibility for the leaflets. In an interview with Hankyoreh, the group says they came together via demonstrations and Social Networking Sites. They claim not to be an organized group and to lack a formal structure (a common characteristic of contemporary social movement groups. Informal power structures are rarely so egalitarian). They admit their tactic of scattering leaflets is an anachronistic method of protesting, but argue that such measure are appropriate because the Park government is reintroducing anachronistic measures to suppress democracy.

South Korean police raided nationalist activist Kim Ki-jong’s office and confiscated about 30 items that could be used to charge Ambassador Mark Lippert’s knife-wielding attacker with “benefiting the enemy (이적성)” under South Korea’s controversial National Security Law (NSL). Among the publications was a copy of Kim Jong-il’s Theory of Cinematic Art [영화예술론].

Newly elected NPAD chairman Moon Jae-in declared his support for the construction of an international airport to serve Saemangeum, a controversial area of reclaimed land in North Jeolla Province. Moon argued that development of the proposed Saemangeum International Airport must form part of the government’s upcoming fifth national plan for airport development, which falls within the purview of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport [국토교통부]. The fourth such plan, covering the period 2011-2015, is available in Korean here.

Moon made his comments during a meeting of the party leadership at the provincial legislative building in Jeonju, the capital of North Jeolla Province. He argued that the proposed new airport is an essential prerequisite of the region attracting the kind of domestic and international firms envisioned in development planning for the area.

However, Moon’s claim is disputed and came in for attack. Nearby provinces that already have international airports were bound to come out against it, and North Chungcheong, home to the airport at Cheongju, did exactly that. The wider Jeolla region also already houses three airports, at Gwangju, Muan, and Gunsan, the latter of which lies just a few kilometers from the northern end of the Saemangeum seawall. Not one of the three is operating at capacity.

On the other hand, only the airport at Gunsan, which sees two domestic flights to Jeju Island per day, is actually in North Jeolla Province at all. Given that South Korea’s provinces are meant to (and do) compete energetically for the income that accompanies national infrastructure projects, and with Jeonju expanding rapidly in an attempt to attain “metropolitan city” (광역시) status, it is possible to argue for a new airport for the province, which is one of South Korea’s least developed.

In response to the scheduled joint ROK-US military exercises Foal Eagle and Key Resolve, North Korea conducted two separate sets of missile launches. The first round of two projectiles was launched at the beginning of March, and Kim Jong-un was described in the North Korean media as personally supervising the launch of seven more missiles in the middle of the month. The missiles have a range of just under 500km. The ROK General Staff stated that the missile launches seem to have been a response to the Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises, and raised military combat readiness.

For their part, the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army issued a statement declaring that the US and its South Korean “puppet army” were at full combat readiness, and that British, Canadian and French forces (some reports also mention Australian troops) had been mobilized as well. The statement also claimed that the exercises were a rehearsal for nuclear war against the North, and that the North Korean army will not throw “words to the wind” in the event of conflict. Conflict during ROK-US military exercises is an annual constant of inter-Korean relations.

The Constitutional Court struck down South Korea’s adultery law at the fifth attempt, calling it a violation of personal freedom. Passed in 1953, approximately 100,000 people have been charged under the law in its 62-year history, according to JTBC (tweet #1). Only people convicted after October 30, 2008 can now appeal their cases, however, since that was the date of the fourth and most recent Constitutional Court review of the law, in which it was found to be constitutional. The right to appeal affects approximately 3,000 cases.

MBC broke down the decision in an extended TV news report (tweet #2). As the image reveals, the only female judge on the panel, Lee Jeong-mi, and Ahn Chang-ho were the two justices who found existing legislation providing for the punishment of adultery to be constitutional. The two issued their judgments with reference to the dangers that adultery poses to traditional family relations and societal values. Articles such as this one imply that Ahn’s background in public peace and security may have been a factor in his ruling, while this rather breathless one in the Chosun Ilbo implies a degree of residual support for the law in conservative circles.

Meanwhile, on March 28 TV Chosun produced an “analysis” piece explaining how and why anyone striving to acquire direct evidence of adultery runs the risk of violating a number of other laws, and suggesting legally acceptable lines of inquiry for the suspicious spouse.

3 segments via JTBC News Room on civil servants stuck in limbo and not working, but still getting paid. http://t.co/K88FfGp2zA#시각

JTBC reports that some parts of South Korea’s bureaucracy are not very efficiently run. An investigative report finds that many senior-level civil servants who have either returned from posts abroad or come back from probation are not quickly reassigned. In one case, a civil servant in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs remained unassigned for fully 675 days after returning from a post abroad. The individual continued to receive basic pay throughout.

In fact, JTBC finds that over the last 2 years, 120, or 8%, of all senior-level civil servants have found themselves in limbo for a significant period of time. It is unclear whether this represents an informal benefit of seniority or a consequence of poor bureaucratic management. It may also be an outcome of developmental employment decisions over a protracted period of time; systematic under-employment is not uncommon in large South Korean employers, and that includes the state.

According to media coverage, President Park Geun-hye was deeply moved by a scene in the movie “International Market” (국제 시장), wherein a couple immediately halt an intense argument when the Korean flag is shown unfurling on television. Upon watching the movie, Park is said to have commented that patriotism can cause a country to overcome its difficulties. Given the constant recourse to nationalism that characterized much of South Korea’s developmental era, her view is probably not far from the mainstream in her age cohort.

Either way, the South Korean government promptly launched flag-raising campaigns. These mainly targeted March 1, when South Koreans commemorate the “March 1st Movement,” a popular uprising against Japanese colonial rule in 1919. However, plans are also afoot to get citizens to raise flags for August 15, the 70th anniversary of South Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule. It is still common for citizens to raise flags on significant national holidays, but the practice has been in decline in recent years.

Ambassador Li at his inauguration as 11th Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the Republic of the Philippines. | Image: PRC Embassy to the Republic of the Philippines

While Swedish diplomats certainly play an important intermediary role for people and governments (e.g., the United States) who wish to engage with Pyongyang, China’s ambassador to the DPRK might be the most important foreign dignitary in the country. So when a new ambassador is posted, heads turn. Among of flurry of other diplomatic appointments last week, Beijing designated Li Jinjun the new ambassador to North Korea. Basing the bulk of his analysis on a close reading of relevant Chinese-language sources,Sino-NK analyst Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga unpacks Beijing’s decision, providing rich context and sound analysis in the process. — Steven Denney, Managing Editor

Does a New Ambassador Mean a “Reset” In China-North Korea Relations?

by Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga

On March 18, Li Jinjun was announced as the new ambassador to Pyongyang to replace Liu Hongcai, who had been Beijing’s envoy to North Korea since 2010. The announcement was officially based on a decision by the National People’s Congress (NPC), which met earlier this month, and enacted by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xinhua separately announced another eight ambassadorial changes the next day, but Li was certainly the most high-profile appointment in a group that included new ambassadors to Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Burundi and the Fiji Islands, among others.

When it comes to North Korea policy, it is hard to say that anything is particularly “routine,” but the announcement of the change in the Pyongyang embassy was very much handled in a bundle with other bureaucratic moves.

A European Expert Cast to North Korea| Ambassador Li Jinjun holds the rank of Vice Minister in the International Liaison Department (ILD). He is a Europe specialist who previously served as ambassador to Burma (2001-2005) and the Philippines (2005-2007). Unlike many of his cohort in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (including Xi Jinping and Zhang Dejiang), he was fortunate in that his education was not interrupted by the Cultural Revolution; he joined the first big class of college students to attend university in 1972 at age 16, an impressive feat.

Li studied abroad in East Germany right before joining the ILD a year later in 1975, where he spent his entire career and rose through the ranks. Li worked in the German embassy from 1987 to 1991 and spent 20 years of his career focusing on Europe, first on the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and then eventually running the ILD’s Western Europe bureau. His one exception was a year spent in the Shandong countryside in 1993-1994; a common detour for Chinese diplomats to gain limited governing experience. Interestingly, he spent nine years in the ILD before he joined the CCP in 1984. Of note, Li was former leader Deng Xiaoping’s translator during Deng’s first visit to Germany in 1984, over three decades ago.

A Long Line of Ambassadors | Li appears to fit the general mold of an ambassador to North Korea much better than his processor, Liu Hongcai. Liu (2010-2015) was a career ILD official who had only spent three years abroad in Japan, based in the Chinese embassy in Tokyo, and had no previous ambassadorial experience. This was in stark contrast to Liu Xiaoming (2006-2010), a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) official who had earned a master’s degree in the United States at Tufts University and rose through the ranks in the MFA’s United States division, eventually becoming Deputy Chief of Mission in the Washington embassy.[1]

Liu Xiaoming had also spent time in Zambia as a young official and was ambassador to Egypt before heading to Pyongyang. Liu is now infamous for his op-ed campaign against his Japanese counterpart in London, writing in the Telegraph last year that “If militarism is like the haunting Voldemort of Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a kind of horcrux, representing the darkest parts of that nation’s soul.” It seems doubtful that Liu Hongcai, although surely a wonderful companion for a Spring Festival feast, would ever write anything so memorable.

China’s previous envoys to Pyongyang have had diverse backgrounds. Wu Donghe (2001-2006) was a career Africa specialist, spending time in Togo and Madagascar and as ambassador to Niger and Mali before serving in Pyongyang in the lead-up to North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006. Wang Guozhang (1999-2001), who had likely the shortest tenure as ambassador, was largely an anti-corruption and discipline specialist, serving in the MFA’s Discipline Inspection Committee, but also spent time in Tunisia and Macao. None of these ambassadors had any experience with North Korea, or any other socialist states. Thus it is not surprising that China did not elevate its charge d’affaires in Pyongyang, Tian Baozhen, to Ambassador, even though he has massive experience in both Koreas and speaks the language fluently.

Most importantly with respect to policy continuity and the new Ambassador, Li becomes the second International Liaison Department (ILD) veteran in a row to become ambassador to North Korea. According to Sina, this marks a reversal of a trend since the 1970s of Chinese ambassadors to North Korea coming from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Li’s status as a Vice Minister reinforces North Korea’s symbolic importance to China, as (by Sina’s count) only nine countries have such senior officials—the United States, Japan, Russia, Brazil and India, among other big powers. Sina noted that, like Li, other ambassadors also had local governing experience, including Pan Zili (1955-1956), who served as Party Secretary of Ningxia and Shanxi province, as well as others who were Party secretaries of Chengdu and Shenyang.

Liu Hongcai is now back at the ILD in Beijing as a Vice Minister. While some may question why he has not been reassigned to a more prestigious position, it is more than possible that returning to his old post will allow him to continue playing a role in China-North Korea relations. Liu is one of the few senior Chinese officials who have met young leader Kim Jong-un, famously riding a Ferris wheel with him in 2012. With Zhou Yongkang, who effectively introduced Kim Jong-un to the world in October 2010, having been not just sidelined but effectively purged, China needs all the continuity it can get with North Korea.

Sino-NK profiled Liu’s role in the bilateral relationship extensively in its Dossier No. 4, by Nick Miller. Liu’s new role in Beijing was uncovered by a Chinese reporter who noticed that the ILD had updated their website to re-include Liu on their roll of Vice Ministers.

Ambassador Liu Hongcai on an unpaved sporting ground in Sinuiju, DPRK, on October 20 2014. Image: PRC Embassy in Pyongyang.

Chinese Media Coverage | With such intense global media scrutiny of North Korea and of the Sino-North Korean relationship, one might imagine that such a significant appointment would garner a significant response. In the PRC, such was not the case. The only in-depth coverage and analysis of the appointment in the Chinese media was from Southern Net, a news portal for Guangdong province. By comparison, most other major portals and news sites simply carried the bare announcement from Xinhua or rehashed Li’s bio from Chinese state-run mixed with some content from Southern Net. Chinese scholars did not appear in any Chinese language coverage of the appointment, even though Yang Xiyu, a former senior MFA official, on the March 17, the day before, and March 19, the day after the announcement.

The Southern Net article was the most explicit, explaining Li’s appointment as advantageous insofar as it continued the precedent of having the ambassador be an ILD official, which would lead to “easy counterpart contact and bilateral communication, meaning there is hope for a return to better Sino-North Korean relations.” Southern Net also rather explicitly noted that the ILD is responsible for foreign relations with the North. Li was described as a straight-shooter, having recently discussed in an interview the “sensitive” Myitsone Dam issue, which China had agreed to build in Myanmar but the project was suspended by Myanmar in 2011 due to domestic political pressure.[2]

Li’s tenures in Myanmar and the Philippines were cast as successful exercises in “trouble-shooting,” and the Philippines Minister of Foreign Affairs reportedly applauded Li when he left in 2007 for his work to jointly develop the South China Sea and maintain stability.

The other notable Chinese media article on the appointment was in China Daily’s English language edition, suggesting that this narrative is a signal for how the Chinese government wants the appointment to be interpreted by the English-speaking world, namely the United States and Europe. The article quoted Yang Xiyu as saying that the “new ambassador is both senior and seasoned” and that “Li will be tasked with the improvement of relations by strengthening economic ties and stepping up efforts to stop the country from pursuing nuclear weapons,” in part through “[facilitating] nuclear talks.” Yang added that “Li is trusted because of his ability to ease tensions with neighboring countries,” echoing Southern Net.

Central Party School professor Zhang Liangui also told China Daily that North Korea’s recent outreach to Russia and South Korea “will be limited if the country does not drop its nuclear weapons ambitions,” concluding that “China’s relations with the DPRK may undergo ups and downs, but it is not affected by any single events,” likely meaning Kim’s purge of his uncle, Jang Song-taek. Kim’s fateful decision still reverberates in China today, as Global Times reran a December 2013 article about Jang’s purge on March 10, just a week before Li was appointed the next ambassador. Yang’s comments about denuclearization and the Six Party Talks dovetail well with the Chinese government’s continued push to revive the dormant forum, but Li faces an uphill climb with U.S. government resistance to restarting talks without certain conditions.

Uncovering Li’s Policy Positions | Li Jinjun may come from the same institution as his predecessor has, but, to put it bluntly, he is neither obligated to imitate his predecessor in every single aspect nor is he to be considered immune from the very clear messaging which has been put forth by President Xi in the past year with respect to China’s diplomacy. One immediately apparent difference between Li Jinjun and his predecessor is their welcome messages on the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang’s homepage, where Li has taken a more strident stance in line with a bolder approach to the relationship under President Xi.

Li Jinjun’s message does not repeat Liu’s emphasis on “close high-level exchanges” and “maintaining communication and coordination on the international stage and regional affairs,” but notably adds that China will work to “maintain peace and stability on the peninsula,” a Chinese term for restraining aggressive and destabilizing actions by both the North and South. Liu Hongcai’s message has already been removed, but a cached version reveals a more positive tone and highlights “deepening cooperation.” Sino-NK is unable to compare these messages to that of Liu Xiaoming or other earlier ambassadors. The Chinese embassy also failed to update at least one page during their apparent rush.

In his meeting with Dandong officials, Li indicated he “would pull all the resources together to promote the opening-up of the border city,” suggesting that China will likely continue to support greater trade and investment in the North and advocate for Kim to pursue his own version of China’s “Reform and Opening,” all intended to help spur the local economy of China’s northeast provinces. However, despite the Chinese government’s best efforts for over 15 years, Jilin and Liaoning provinces have little to show.

Xiangqi, or Chinese chess, requires as much strategy as does diplomacy. | Image: Brian Hirschy

Implications for China-North Korea Relations | From the perspective of Southern Net’s positive coverage, Li’s first task an ambassador could very well be to get the relationship back on track, but that would assume a coherent vision from the Chinese leadership for where the bilateral relationship should go. The Chinese leadership under President Xi appears uninteresting in maintaining high-level political contacts simply for the sake of “normalcy,” but is also largely unable to influence Kim Jong-un into behavior more favorable to China. Liu Hongcai was obviously ineffectual at reining in Kim Jong-il during the 2010 inter-Korean conflicts or Kim Jong-un during the 2013 nuclear test and several missile tests, but he was not removed from office for those failings. Indeed, Liu did oversee the succession to Kim Jong-un, fought for the safety of Chinese tourists in trouble in North Korea, and maintained at least some contact with the North Korean government when relations turned cold under President Xi. The question is if Li will provide more than just a fresh face for the relationship, and afford the Xi administration the forceful advocate it needs to create a receptive audience in Pyongyang for Chinese messages and signals.

The timing of the appointment officially falls with the Chinese political calendar during the NPC meeting, and Liu Hongcai’s four years in Pyongyang do fit the general trend of ambassadors’ tenures lasting between four to six years going back to 1956, with the aforementioned exception of Wang Guozhang. It is therefore unwise to read the present change as evidence that President Xi and his fellow Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) members desire an immediate change in the personal dynamics of the Sino-North Korean relationship. There are no noteworthy recent events in the Sino-North Korean relationship that would explain a speedy exit for Liu, and Sino-NK can find no foreshadowing by Chinese experts or officials that suggest a tectonic change has been in the works.

It is also unlikely that this is part of preparations for a Xi-Kim meeting in Moscow in May for Russia’s commemoration of its defeat of Germany in WWII. A series of meeting and shuttle diplomacy between senior officials from both sides would likely be evident before such a meeting, and that has not yet happened publicly. Of note, Liu’s predecessor, Liu Xiaoming, a MFA veteran who is now ambassador to Great Britain, was reportedly requested to be recalled by North Korea when North Korean intelligence services been eavesdropping on the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang overheard him tell a group of Chinese investors that they should take their money elsewhere and not invest in North Korea. However, Sino-NK has heard no similar admonitions of Liu’s personal handling of the relationship in Pyongyang and Li’s background as another ILD official suggests the change is more procedural than indicative of a power struggle over North Korea policy in Beijing.

Several indicators to Li’s reception in Pyongyang include: 1) how soon he meets with any senior North Korean official, and especially when he meets with Kim Jong-un; 2) how many site visits Li is forced to attend for publicity photos versus how many significant meetings he has in the first months; and 3) how his comments on the standard issues of bilateral political relations, economic cooperation and denuclearization are framed in the North Korean and Chinese state media. There is also the matter of his appointment being confirmed in the North Korean media, which has gone quite cold toward China in every area–state television as well as, oddly, the Chinese-language website of the Rodong Sinmun.

For analysts, Li’s appointment should confirm that the ILD will maintain control of the bilateral political relationship and day-to-day interactions for the foreseeable future, despite this responsibility ostensibly falling to the MFA. However, the ILD has been somewhat sidelined recently in its ability to influence policy-making as President Xi has consolidated power to himself, including on North Korea issues. Ambassador Li may indeed present an opportunity for the ILD to regain some influence over policy in Beijing and generate momentum for the relationship in Pyongyang.

[2] Sino-NK was unable to find the original interview with Li about the Myitsone Dam.

]]>http://sinonk.com/2015/03/27/does-a-new-ambassador-mean-a-reset-in-china-north-korea-relations/feed/0Yongusil 62: Contentious Politics on the Korean Peninsula, a Workshop at the University of Torontohttp://sinonk.com/2015/03/24/yongusil-62-contentious-politics-on-the-korean-peninsula-a-workshop-at-the-university-of-toronto/
http://sinonk.com/2015/03/24/yongusil-62-contentious-politics-on-the-korean-peninsula-a-workshop-at-the-university-of-toronto/#commentsTue, 24 Mar 2015 13:22:50 +0000http://sinonk.com/?p=15655

The contentious struggle on the peninsula. | Image: Pedrosimones7

The developmental trajectories of North and South Korea have shaped the contours of each country’s contentious political environment. In the contentious atmosphere of an on-going labor dispute, the Comparative Politics Student Group (CPSG) and the Centre for the Study of Korea at the University of Toronto hosted a workshop on the latest work on contentious politics in both Koreas. The workshop, moderated by Sino-NK Managing Editor Steven Denney, took place at the Worker’s Action Center on Sunday, March 8. There were two groups and four presenters, each group representing one side of the 38th.

Sino-NK’s own Dr. Adam Cathcart and Christopher Green presented their work on contentious politics in North Korea during the Kim Jong-un era. The research represents a portion of the output for an Academy of Korean Studies (AKS) competitive research grant.

Using material from a co-authored piece, Green presented on the case of “re-defector” press conferences convened in Pyongyang between 2011 and 2013 to illustrate how the party-state employs an active information management strategy to buttress its rule. Building upon the contemporary “politics of authoritarianism” literature and the concept of governmentality, the research utilizes Thomas Callaghy’s “domain consensus” as a framework to codify the reciprocal communicative process by which the party-state interacts with the citizenry. The domain consensus framework sub-divides authoritarian control into a trifurcated framework of ideal types: coercive, utilitarian, and normative. The presentation, and the research more generally, focused on the third of these—the normative. As such, it explores the information management strategy used to promote a consensus on expectations of life inside and outside North Korea.

Using a similar theoretical approach, Cathcart presented to the workshop audience the idea that the all-female performance group in North Korea, known as the Moranbong Band, is a theatrical expression of the state’s own view of itself. Further, Cathcart explained how the band articulates the boundaries of acceptable behavior. In other words, the Moranbong Band aids in the establishment of a “reciprocity of expectations” between the state and the citizenry.

Both Cathcart and Green introduced data from structured interviews conducted with North Korean defectors (as part of fieldwork conducted in South Korea during the summer of 2014) to support their theoretically-driven findings; while limited (due to small sample size), they were able to show how information is channeled from the top-down is consumed and reproduced from the bottom-up.

Two professors from the University of Toronto, Drs. Jennifer Chun and Judy Han, jointly presented their latest collaborative work on cultures of protest in the South Korean labor movement. Chun and Han address questions, such as: Why do workers choose to express their collective defiance to unjust labor practices through corporeal resistance and bodily sacrifice? What do such protest performances reveal about the expectations and aspirations of dissenting political subjects in post-authoritarian South Korea?

The presentation focused on acts of dramatic resistance and solidarity as a mainstay in South Korea’s public landscape, especially among the many precariously-employed workers in the country. Chun and Hand argue that, whether opposing the labor repression of authoritarian industrialization or the market-driven policies of neoliberal development, workers and their advocates have relied on an array of protest acts to challenge the legitimacy of ruling authorities — from workplace strikes and occupations to hunger strikes and worker suicides. While many labor and social movement scholars have examined the instrumental, organizational and structural factors that promote worker collective action, much less attention has been paid to the affective, temporal and spatial dimensions of workers’ protest politics.

To better understand the cultural dimensions of worker protests, their presentation examined a new pattern of popular contention in Korean workers’ already radical repertoire of collective action: the prolonged embodiment of emotional, physical, and financial hardship by precariously-employed workers. In particular, they considered forms of protest with strong expressive elements: religious and spiritual rituals such as head shaving ceremonies, fasting, and the Buddhist atonement ritual samboilbae (삼보일배; lit. “three steps and a bow”) as well as long-term occupations of symbolic sites such as construction cranes, church bell towers, and building rooftops. By examining how workers dramatize precarity, Chun and Han seek to develop a more systematic analysis of the relationship between the cultural politics of injustice and the changing world of work and employment under neoliberal developmental regimes.

]]>http://sinonk.com/2015/03/24/yongusil-62-contentious-politics-on-the-korean-peninsula-a-workshop-at-the-university-of-toronto/feed/0“Parties with Different Ideologies:” China’s New Ambassador to North Koreahttp://sinonk.com/2015/03/24/parties-with-different-ideologies-chinas-new-ambassador-to-north-korea/
http://sinonk.com/2015/03/24/parties-with-different-ideologies-chinas-new-ambassador-to-north-korea/#commentsTue, 24 Mar 2015 04:03:00 +0000http://sinonk.com/?p=15641

Martin Schulz (left), President of European Parliament, meets Wang Jiarui (right) on March 16, 2015 (having met with Yang Jiechi earlier, and followed by appointments with Xi Jinping and Zhang Dejiang). | Image: International Liason Department

Since the abrupt purge and execution of Jang Song-taek in December 2013, the proverbial “close as lips and teeth” relationship between China and North Korea has clearly taken a turn toward the chilly. Yet, in the past fourteen months, the relationship has not veered toward irrevocable rupture; indeed, China has been taking steps to keep the relationship stable while also trying to give itself room to maneuver. Despite perceptions of China’s allegedly influence over Pyongyang, China operates in a generally unstable climate in which North Korea’s response to overtures such as building roads to connect it to Chinese-financed cross-border activities, indicating intention to restart Six-Party Talks, or toning down relations with South Korea, is tentative and unconvincing. China, therefore, appears to be treading on relatively thin ice.

Thus, the appointment of a new Chinese Ambassador to Pyongyang, announced last week, will serve as a Rorschach test. If you think the relationship is bad, the change in ambassadors will highlight “instability,” if you think the relationship is stable, then it is clearly just a routine move. But, more concretely, the appointment can also function as a means of ascertaining where China, at least, thinks things might go.

Li Jinjun (李进军), former vice president of the International Liaison Department (ILD), was announced as the 17th ambassador to North Korea. Li replaces Liu Hongcai (刘洪才), who has returned to his former post of vice president of the ILD and now appears to be focusing on China-Africa relations, rather than moving into a plum ambassadorial post in Europe (as was the case with his predecessor Liu Xiaoming).

Historically, China’s ambassadors to North Korea began their careers as diplomats with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. More recently, however, there seems to be a trend of appointees from the ILD, which focuses on international inter-party relations. While China has made certain moves in the past year and a half to “normalize” the relationship with North Korea (meaning to deal with North Korea under the auspices of the Foreign Ministry rather than ILD), the appointment of another ILD bureaucrat to staff the Embassy in Pyongyang could indicate that Beijing is not yet prepared to move things too quickly in that direction. Wang Jiarui, the head of ILD is one of the few members of the CCP who has met Kim Jong-un in person (Zhou Yongkang having been ignominiously purged), and continues to exert a certain magnetism over diplomacy with North Korea.

As People’s Daily describes, Li’s background is anchored in diplomacy, but he is far from a pure “Asia hand.” Experience dealing with divided Germany in the 1970s is also part of his makeup and outlook:

In 1972, Li entered the Shanghai Foreign Language Institute (上海外国语学院; now Shanghai International Studies University), and went on to study in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1974. From September 1975, he worked for the ILD, and has acted as deputy division director, division director; deputy director-general and then Director-General of the China Economic Cooperation Centre; Director-General of the General Office; and Director-General of the Bureau of West European Affairs. From September 1993 to October 1994, he undertook a secondment in Huantai County, Shandong province. In December 2000, Li was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Union of Myanmar, and in November 2005 he became Ambassador to the Republic of the Philippines. From March 2007 to March 2015, Li acted as vice president of the ILD, before taking up the position of Ambassador to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Not only opened the door for dialogue between the Chinese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party, but also for communication with other political parties around the world with different ideologies [不仅开启了中共和社民党的对话，继而也开启了中共和世界上其他奉行不同意识形态政党的交流].

On March 17, just one day before his appointment was made official, Li met with Dandong’s Party Secretary Dai Yulin in a hotel in the city. As the preeminent hub for Sino-North Korean trade, the border city of Dandong is the focus of cross-border economic initiatives, as well as black market trade. As it turned out, March 17 also happened to be the same day that two armed North Korean border guards escaped into Dandong, sparking a manhunt and the eventual arrest of one of the soldiers. If the Ambassador needed a crash course in North Korea’s ability to disrupt normal goings-on, he surely got it.

There is no doubt that Li already has a lot on his plate. However, with his impressive diplomatic and party credentials, it is hoped that his appointment will lead to improved relations with North Korea and facilitate an official visit by Kim Jong-un, who has yet to visit China since becoming Supreme Leader in December 2011.

Sources: “Li Jinjun is appointed China’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to North Korea” [李进军任中国驻朝鲜特命全权大使], Renmin Ribao, March 18, 2015.

“Former Vice President of ILD Li Jinjun is appointed China’s Ambassador to North Korea”［中联部原副部长李进军调任中国驻朝鲜大使], Guanchazhe, March 18, 2015.

Some human rights activists have distanced themselves from political prison camp survivor Shin Dong-hyuk following Shin’s recent admission that he altered key parts of his life story as published, among other places, in the phenomenally successful Escape from Camp 14. Meanwhile, others have opted to stand by him – critically or uncritically, vocally or silently.

According to Eric Foley, fully embracing Shin’s admission can result in a more authentic kind of North Korean activism, where the co-creation of narrative brings us closer to understanding. Provided that we are willing to follow Shin’s lead and make a similar admission to his own. — Christopher Green, Co-Editor

Shin Dong-hyuk: Finally Poised For Effective Activism

by Eric Foley*

Shin Dong-hyuk changed his very public life story.

The story Mr. Shin originally told, with Blaine Harden in the bestselling 2012 book Escape from Camp 14, detailed a Gulag childhood filled with gruesome beatings, familial executions, and a harrowing escape from a North Korean concentration camp. Following the North Korean government’s 2014 release of video of Shin’s father repudiating his son’s account, however, Shin confessed to Harden that their book did not accurately depict some of the details of his life story.

One newspaper paraphrased Mr. Shin’s complex admission about his narrative under the headline, “I lied.” Noted North Korea observer Andrei Lankov wrote that Shin had an “incentive to exaggerate… in order to win some attention in a rather crowded media market.” Donald Kirk contended that Shin’s actions “raise questions about the credibility of thousands of North Koreans who’ve defected,” a population the commentator says has “long been notorious for distorting their life stories.” Activist Joshua Stanton pronounced, “No man matters more than the truth itself.”

Neither Lankov, Kirk, nor Stanton is known for reflexive skepticism of defector testimonies. But undergirding these comments is an understanding of narrative in which life story is the creation and responsibility of the one who lives it and tells it. That is, it is Mr. Shin’s life story, and listeners/recipients are entitled to truth. Little role is accorded to hearers in the formation of that story.

But those who study life story narration (especially the life story narration of North Korean defectors) observe a different relationship between those who tell life stories and those who hear them—one that places far more responsibility on hearers than has been reflected in the discussion following Shin’s admission.

Life Stories: Co-Created Accounts | Life story narrative is what noted linguist Charlotte Linde refers to as a coherence system, “a system that claims to provide a means for understanding, evaluating, and constructing accounts of experience.” In other words, we tell stories—including life stories—in order to help others understand and evaluate our experiences. As such, stories must be coherent not only to the teller but also to the hearer.

As narratologist Jerome Bruner notes, tellers do not (and cannot) communicate the strange new worlds of their experience to hearers except that they re-create those worlds from “other worlds, created by others… taken as given.” That means that tellers have the challenging job of narrating their life stories from within the meaning framework of the hearer, using words, ways of thinking, and even emotions and actions that make sense to the hearer.

Linde explains that coherent life stories exhibit two characteristics. First, they evaluate the teller. That is, they describe the kind of person he or she is in a particular situation or setting. Second, they have “extended reportability,” meaning they are the kinds of stories likely to be told over and over again. Where lives intersect “landmark” events—both epochal public ones (e.g., natural disasters, social events that transform whole societies, the death of Kim Il-sung) and common personal milestones (e.g., marriage, childbirth, communist party induction rites), the life story must necessarily give account of such events. For example, when the exiled writer Jang Jin-sung tells us that he met Kim Jong-il, we tend to expect him to give a coherent account of that meeting, describing not only the North Korean leader but his own interior monologue in a way that makes sense to us. The framing of an effective story allows for coherent re-telling.

This is why it is easier to narrate the life story of Shin the activist than Shin the man: Shin the activist may make use of tropes, emotions, clichés, and reactions common to human rights activists, consumers of refugee stories, and readers of concentration camp accounts in narrating his landmark life events. In fact, as Christopher Green noted in a Sino-NK interview with Blaine Harden in May 2013, it was the reality that Shin’s life story could be told through “little more than bullet points”—“1) born in a North Korean prison camp; 2) betrayed family members and saw them killed; 3) miraculously escaped camp; and 4) resettled in South Korea”—that made Shin the activist such an icon.

But narrating the life of Shin the man is much more difficult. He must narrate an authentic self-evaluating account that makes sense within his hearer’s understanding about events in life that make no sense. He has to somehow authentically narrate sending his mother and brother to death by reporting plans of their camp escape to a guard, all because (as Shin later told Harden) “She never paid attention to my birthday.” These are hard stories for a teller to narrate authentically because the teller knows that hearers will likely find such thoughts and actions objectionable or incomprehensible, especially if the hearer is not familiar with the teller’s world. So the teller is faced with a challenge and a choice: How do I narrate this story which is beyond the comprehension of my hearers?

Narrating Incoherence: Seeking Meaning | It is possible to say something more meaningful about Shin’s narrative revisions than “Shin lied” or “Shin has exaggerated in order to win some attention in a rather crowded media market.” Within the psychoanalytic tradition Shin may be said to have at least four options for narrating through incoherency. Lying or exaggerating is certainly one.

A second is that, to borrow the terminology of psychoanalysts Cox and Theilgaard, Shin “finds his own story intolerable” and descends into the silence of narrative failure.

A third option is that Shin engages in what psychoanalyst Donald Spence calls narrative “smoothing,” in which, faced with “a discontinuity or a lack of closure or a failure to make sense,” he uses shared conventions and approximations from the hearer’s world to “smooth over” the incoherency in order to make understanding possible. Smoothing differs from lying in that it is a grasping at aiding the hearer in sense making, an effort to reveal rather than conceal, using whatever resources are available from the hearer.

A fourth option is that Shin receives additional resources for life story narration from the hearer. Such resources, broadly termed “prompting” in the psychoanalytic tradition, are interventions hearers make when they sense that a narrative is beginning to veer into lies/exaggeration, silence, or smoothing.

A prompt is an intentional effort to “upend” the narrative in an effort to save it from inauthenticity and incoherency. A prompt might include requesting the teller to re-narrate the story from the points of view of different people within it other than the teller. Alternately, a hearer could ask the teller, “What parts of this story do you yourself still not understand? Are there different ways you sometimes tell this story in your own mind?”

A prompt can take the form of hearer sharing with teller a similar story, only one with more authenticity, for example:

I once heard a story about someone in a similar situation. They said [x]. What do you think of that? Did you experience anything like that?

A hearer can also make a request for a more unedited account, something like:

OK, that’s the easy version of a hard story. Now tell me the hard version that maybe doesn’t even make sense to you. Tell me the parts that will make me not like you.

Prompts remind the teller that there are multiple ways to tell the same story, and the hearer is ready to accept a more difficult, less coherent telling. Generally the cost is that tellers and hearers give up the coherent or attractive story and agree to labor together narratively for the harder but more authentic one.

Shin Dong-hyuk, whose life story is told by Blaine Harden, protests the repatriation of North Korean defectors living in China. | Image: Dan Bielefeld

The Responsibility: Hearing Well | Recognition of this reality of life story narration means new responsibilities for hearers. Hearers are revealed as the necessary co-creators without whom life story cannot come into being. What hearers contribute are relational and structural tools for the telling of stories. Raised in a country where only one story is taught—the story of Kim Il-sung—North Korean defectors are especially reliant on the narrative tools and prompts provided to them by their hearers for the conveyance and interpretation of their life stories.

As was the case with Shin, the first life story narration most defectors undertake is nearly always before a South Korean government interrogator tasked with determining whether or not they are spies and whether they have a legitimate and defensible claim to South Korean citizenship. It is difficult to imagine a lower grade of narrative life story co-creation than interrogation.

Yet once a defector’s life story narrative is established, it rarely changes without intense scrutiny—even for defectors who do not publish autobiographies. Shin’s own story remained the same for more than nine years, and that was seemingly part of its appeal. Unfortunately, Shin’s hearers did not detect that his original telling had had its genesis in a “panicky, shame-driven decision to conceal and reorder” his experiences as part of his initial interrogation.

The consistency and coherency of his telling pointed to a problem: Consistent, coherent narratives from survivors of extreme trauma should not be heard as “objective” or “true” accounts but rather as symptoms of stress-survivor behavior, efforts to shield the self from narrative failure. As Harden later heard from Dr. Stevan M. Weine, a specialist on political violence and trauma, “When someone goes through profound trauma and I don’t hear a disjointed story, I am suspicious.” Disjointed stories, paradoxically, may thus be a sign of hearing well.

Psychoanalytical practice aside, we are still left with Donald Kirk’s stinging and uncomfortable question to Mr. Shin: “Why, oh why, did you feel the compulsion to make up key details when clearly your own harrowing tale was already horrible enough?” Perhaps the answer is: Because in life story narrative, we get as good as we give. That is, the narratives we hear depend as much on us and how we listen as they do on the teller and what the teller chooses to say. So when we get a coherent, unchanging life story from a self-reported trauma survivor, we should give not a publishing contract but rather further time, effort, relationship-building, and disruptive prompts so as to rescue the teller, and ourselves from our tropes and stock-and-trade emotions and reactions within which the teller must narrate.

Shin Dong-hyuk: An Activist Revived | Thus, the question is not whether we forgive Shin or whether we believe him now. The question is: To what degree do we as hearers take responsibility for the narrative (and the activist) that we co-created, one fundamentally shaped by the horizons of our hearing and understanding? If Shin is guilty for the story he told, then we are also guilty for how we heard it, because his story is dependent upon both.

Activist Joshua Stanton dismisses the revised life story of Mr. Shin as discredited and says we should rely instead on “the testimony of 80 [North Korean defector] witnesses and experts, and… 240 confidential interviews with [North Korean defector] victims and other witnesses.” While Stanton’s concern is with protecting the perceived credibility of the UN Commission of Inquiry report (in whose 320+ pages Shin’s testimony is footnoted six times), his comment also reveals the limitations of our hearing. The stories of these 320 are, of necessity, as co-created as Mr. Shin’s and liable to the same limitations. Justice Michael Kirby’s attentiveness to judicial process and articulated awareness of leading questions cannot itself ameliorate the fact that he is drawing from a body of narratives that have already been coherently expressed.

As with Shin, the narratives that appear the smoothest and most credible may ultimately prove to be the most in need of re-narration—not for the sake of making them more objectively “true” and thus useful for activism, but for the sake of prompting their tellers to co-create with us life stories that are first of all personally meaningful to them, set free from the lingering constraints of initial interrogations and the horizons of our political symbolism and utility calculus.

Hearing Better: The New Activism | Re-narrations like Shin’s are only problematic to the degree that we (mis)construe them as compromising credibility rather than reflecting a reality of healthy life story development, especially in those who have experienced severe trauma. Mr. Shin is now finally useful as a human rights advocate because his story can prompt us to understand, acknowledge, and accept this and thus fundamentally change the way we hear, and write, and in every way act to co-create the life stories of North Korean defectors. With Shin the activist exposed as a fiction, we can stop creating fiction by genuinely hearing the stories of North Korean defectors as men and women.

On this matter, research on life story is conclusive and clear: The idea of the “objective” hearer who records the “true” account of the teller without distortion is a myth. As Tennyson’s Ulysses puts it, “I am a part of all that I have met.” Our desires, goals, preferences, and needs influence deeply how we hear every story that is told to us, and thus, unavoidably, it influences every teller.

Therefore, we who hear North Korean defectors share their stories must ask ourselves: What are we listening for? If we are listening for human rights documentation, religious testimonies, or iconic tales that sway public opinion, we will fictionalize every North Korean narrative we hear. No life story is a case study if authentically heard. But if we discipline and train ourselves to listen in order simply to help North Korean tellers understand their own lives and find meaning and purpose in their stories for their own sakes, we can co-create truly authentic narratives. Authentic stories for activism come from what we overhear, not from what we aim to hear.

If all of this sounds impractical or naive, it is likely no more so than believing than Shin’s re-narration will be the exception, not the rule. Not only narrative theory but the practical experiences of anyone who has worked with North Korean defector life story narration for some time would suggest otherwise. Life story narrative simply does not emerge fully formed, especially from trauma sufferers. There is no straight-line, short-term process to getting the story right or getting the right story. There is only the hard, time-consuming work of relationship that teaches us to hear constructively, yet without preconception.

More authentic life stories require more time for healing, more authentic relationships that are purposeless in the best sense of the word, more thorough knowledge of North Korea and North Korean narrative, more understanding of narrative structures and how they operate, more authentic ways of hearing (i.e., ones that replace panic and shame-shaped narratives with new hearings that do not demand continuity with past tellings), more empathy for North Korean defectors as sufferers of trauma, and a greater commitment to North Korean defectors as men and women than as political symbols.

If as Stanton says there is no man who is above the truth, then neither is there a life story “truer” than the relationship that co-creates it.

* Eric Foley is the CEO of Voice of the Martyrs Korea, a Seoul-based NGO that partners with underground North Korean Christians and North Korean defectors in Christian ministry initiatives to reach North Koreans wherever they are found. The author of These are the Generations, the life story of third generation underground North Korean Christians, Foley is committed to enabling North Korean defectors to narrate their lives fully in South Korea. He recently completed his doctorate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio on the subject of North Korean defectors’ life story narratives and their impact on defectors’ assessments of meaning in life.

2015 is a year of important anniversaries around the world, and North Korea is no different. In the mass consciousness the most prominent of these is the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in August. In the northern half of the Korean peninsula there is another 70th anniversary to consider, that of the Korean Workers’ Party on October 10. The authorities in Pyongyang have already signalled their intent to memorialize the founding of the septuagenarian ruling party in grand style.

By contrast, the 90th anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s crossing of the Yalu River in the frigid winter of 1925 has aroused little or no fanfare. Except, that is, for a select group of schoolchildren–precisely whom we know not and possibly never will. For this amorphous gang it has been a most memorable occasion indeed. Darting hither and thither, what must these children have thought as they re-enacted the frozen journeys of the nation’s founders; not least when they arrived at the banks of the broad, majestic Yalu only to learn that, quite unlike their Eternal President, their fate was not to cross over and embrace the wilds of Manchuria? Robert Winstanley-Chesters considers the implications of this nominally secular pilgrimage- Christopher Green, Co-editor

Footsteps and Deterritorializations: “And did those feet in ancient times…”

by Robert Winstanley-Chesters

Chaucer’s narrative of happy, hapless, challenged, and occasionally pious 15th century pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas Beckett at Canterbury is temporally, linguistically, and politically a world away from the snow covered Amnok and Tumen river basins of the 1920s. I do not seek to make any connection between the two, for none can be made other than to reconfirm the cultural importance of what was known to Chaucer and those of his age as “pilgrimage.” While pilgrimage, as both concept and action, has not faded from the repertoire of cultural practice (Lourdes, Santiago di Compostella and Uman in the Ukraine being relevant contemporary examples), in recent years some of the energy deployed has dissipated away to the field of secular culture and politics.

Pilgrimage has obvious advantages; it carves out temporal spaces in busy human lives and creates safe, shared groupings with which to journey. But perhaps the key feature of the act as it has been transmitted to secular form lies in its utility as a vessel for the carrying, sustaining, and socialization of memory. In Britain, for example, annual commemoration of the birth of trade unionism in the village of Tolpuddle recalls the Tolpuddle Martyrs, eulogizing their struggle and transportation whilst re-temporalizing and re-territorializing the process, narrative and context of the period.

Kim Il-sung crosses the Amnok River in “Legendary Hero for All Ages.” | Image: Foreign Languages Publishing House

The Sun of Pyongyang: De-territorialization | Anyone who focuses on North Korea will be well aware of the political conceptions that surround the country’s founding leadership and its existing state. Kim Il-sung, the first President of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is also the last as he holds permanent office. This extra-territorial, post-physical state allows Kim to serve abstract, esoteric functions in the North Korean political structure; as a vessel for memory and a carrier signal for charismatic authority. As Pyongyang’s “Sun,” Kim permanently radiates beneficence, care, and inspiration upon the topography and territory of North Korea, subject to the impact of neither physical nor temporal change.

However, the citizens of Pyongyang, no matter how politically engaged or institutionally connected they may be, live in concrete space and time. They are, therefore, potentially disconnected in vital ways (from a North Korean institutional perspective) from this font of ideological and philosophical inspiration. Addressing this matter requires a multiplicity of tools through which the state re-establishes the connection between Sun and people; by constant exposure to government narrative, the virtual omnipresence of images of the Kims, and studied celebration of waypoints in the narrative of the dynasty.

To all intents and purposes, commemorative days serve as North Korean “Saints Days;” crystallizations of supra-temporal, esoteric streams of narrative charisma. Sino-NK has explored the nature of Pyongyang mythos many times before; however, it also requires mythography. We have encountered this in other fascinating academic analysis. What has not been addressed is what seems to be a developing tendency to provide opportunities and spaces for North Korean citizens to encounter the charismatic energies produced by these ‘deterritiorializings‘ and ‘de-temporalizings’ for themselves; to walk theatrically in the footsteps of the nationalist past.

Across Frozen Rivers: Pedagogical Charismatic Journey | Far from the “shoores” of April and perhaps closer to the “droght” of March, Kim Il-sung’s crossing, according to current North Korea narratology, occurred in an icy January 1925 over the frozen waters of the Amnok (Yalu) River. It was this crossing which began the period of exile from which so much of Kimist authority and charisma derive. Naturally, this moment is already subject to much memorialization. This year marks the ninetieth anniversary of the act, and as such this obsession with anniversaries and commemoration was bound to be an important moment for political and ideological reiteration.

It was not surprising, therefore, when on January 23Rodong Sinmun reported, “A national meeting took place at the People’s Palace of Culture Wednesday to mark the 90th anniversary of the 250-mile journey for national liberation made by President Kim Il-sung.” Nor was it surprising that the newspaper continued with the following paragraph of assertions:

On January 22, Juche 14 (1925) Kim Il-sung started the 250-mile journey for national liberation from his native village Mangyongdae to the Northeastern area of China. During the journey he made up the firm will to save the country and the nation deprived by Japanese imperialism. New history of modern Korea began to advance along the unchangeable orbit of independence, Songun and socialism.

Kim Jong-il’s attempts to utilize this key source of nationalist power on the fiftieth anniversary of the same in 1975 is addressed in the text. Space is also made for some of the urgent, vociferous Mt. Baekdu-focused themes of Kim Jong-un’s 2015 New Year’s Message:

Respected Marshal Kim Jong-un is wisely leading the work to ensure that the sacred tradition of the Korean revolution started and victoriously advanced by Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il is given steady continuity… calling on the school youth and children to hold them in high esteem as the eternal sun of Juche and carry forward the march to Mt. Baekdu to the last.

Schoolchidren march off on the pilgrimage | Image: Rodong Sinmun

How would these school children hold this “sacred tradition” in esteem: Passive participation in a Workers’ Party meeting? The singing of songs and poems dedicated to nationalist urgency? Appearing slightly overawed and/or afraid next to the Young Generalissimo during on-the spot guidance? No, it would in fact be none of these, but something far stranger. Instead of abstraction and narrative opacity, there would instead be a period of acute reterritorialization on the pages of Rodong Sinmun, in the output of KCTV and, for a time, on the streets and paths of South Pyongan Province.

The process for the schoolchildren’s selection, the nature of the institutions from which they came or their ages, elements which might support a really coherent, cogent, and convincing re-enactment process, are never stated in Rodong Sinmun reporting of the enterprise. Yet the physicality of their journey is clear and important to the narrative. This physicality, common to pilgrimages elsewhere, in which breaks, pauses, and stops must be taken, one imagines to rest the tired legs of the children after crossing “one steep pass after another,” is clear to the reader. These are presented as real children of North Korea in 2015, not cyphers for the pre-Liberation, nationalist past; they are presumably revitalised by their intersection with ideological energy.

In Kanggye | Image: Rodong Sinmun

Conceiving of this pilgrimage as yet another theatrical moment in North Korea’s never ending narratological flow would be to miss some of its most important elements and fail to draw out the deeper context. The theatrical potential is clear; yes, the children travelled down a well trodden list of places and spaces of charisma, one that appeared ideologically and narratologically sound. Having left Mangyongdae, Kim Il-sung’s home village in conventional narrative, they passed Kaechon, Kujang, Hyangsan, Huichon, and Kangyye, “along the historic road covered by the President with the lofty aim to save the destiny of the country and nation in the dark days when Korea was under the Japanese imperialists’ colonial rule.”

In keeping with Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of deterritorialization, the spaces and practices of relation within the frame of the journey are as important as its starting point, route and destination, a fact in common with earlier narratives of North Korean historiography (which will be encountered in one of the sister pieces to this essay). Though these children walk the route of the commemoration of North Korean revolution and liberation in 2015, the relational praxis encountered is that of 1925. Whatever these children think in the quieter moments of their own particular everyday (perhaps watching South Korean TV dramas on smuggled in USB sticks, helping their parents engage in furtive transactions at semi-legal markets, or just coping with the mixed ennui of resignation, exasperation and desperation produced by interaction with state institutions), the social and personal context of those dark days of the late 1920s is activated by their every footstep. Their breaks would include hearing the “impressions of the reminiscences of anti-Japanese guerrillas,” and beginning their march again they would become, represent, and even channel the aspirations of those same guerrillas.

It seems that having departed Pyongyang on January 22, the children arrived at their (and both Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il’s) destination, Phophyong in Ryanggang Province around February 4. Phophyong, they say, was the site of Kim Il-sung’s momentous crossing of the Amnok River, the site where the young man would transition from subjugated Chosun with its political frame of colonisation to resistance on the wild fringes of Manchuria and a new frame of personal and political liberation and struggle.

Arriving in Kim Hyong-jik County [김형직군], a border county of Ryanggang Province that was renamed as such in the late 80s in commemoration of Kim Il-sung’s father. | Image: Rodong Sinmun

To Phophyong: And Beyond? | What is most intriguing is the location of this territory at the edge of the state. The school children arrived at Phophyong, a place famous in local history and culture as one of subjective transfer, of existential passage from one mode of relation to another, a place of crossing… and yet they did not cross. Perhaps in these days of strained relations between Beijing and Pyongyang such charismatic commemorations cannot be enacted on both sides of the sovereign boundary. Given the importance of North Korea’s ideological omnipresence, perhaps they could in any case never be undertaken in a different political space. But the acute re-territorializing of the contemporary everyday beyond the shore of the river at Phophyong leaves our narrative, their narrative, in a distinct disconnect, a functional void.

How are we to fill that void?

Leaving the schoolchildren of 2015 and their charismatic footsteps behind, we must return to the relational context of those ensconced in colonial and resistive subjectivity. Tracing their footsteps, pilgrimages and journeys we can, quite unlike the schoolchildren at Phophyong, navigate the bounds of territory and territorialization, and cross the Amnok…

The University of Toronto, as ever a center of East Asian research and analysis, has been busy over the last few weeks. In the first of two postings addressing matters in southern Ontario, Sino-NK recounts academic interaction on a contentious Friday in Toronto.

Making extensive reference to Magalugi Undong (a new village movement distinct from Park Chung-hee’s Saemaul Undong movement of the 1970s) and the Ingamagi Undong (new humanities awareness movement), Song’s book investigates the affect of the Korean financial milieu derived and embedded during the 1950s and 1960s and the economic ecology produced by it. Song examines, in particular, the censure of working Korean women in 1990s as the national birth rate declined and those present discussed this within the framing of “fetishized notions of the working individual” and a society which judges everything by its ability to contribute “productively.” Through her investigation Song uncovers the rejection of hyper-modernity and globalization by women of a post-industrial South Korean society.

Participants also considered in their encounter with Song’s work analysis by Nancy Abelmann, lauding her assertions and desire to reframe and reconfigure Korean Studies using a wider framework of academic methodologies and analytical approaches, such as that of Michel Foucault’s.

Some felt that Song’s work served as a provocation in its intellectual engagement with the field of genealogy and the political economy of post-1997 South Korea. Comments were made with regards to contemporary economic and social affect following the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Song noted the take-off in demand for low-skill workers following the Asia debt; it is here, she alleges, a “multicultural Korea” began, noting that no one should be actively seeking to implement a Korean model of development (if such a thing even exists). Additional comments were made about the disproportionate number of female irregular workers; despite the revoking of the family register system (hoju), thus making women nominally autonomous from men, there is a clear bifurcation in the workforce.

Attendees to the event were given plenty of leads for innovative avenues of further ethnographic and social science research.

As much as Europhile Poland would like to forget, relations between Warsaw and Pyongyang were once very cordial, and the connections between the two unlikely socialist brother nations (in the pedagogical and academic field) were among the most mysterious and intriguing in the now distant Communist bloc. These past connective glories have not completely atrophied. Driven on by erstwhile contributor to Sino-NK, Nicolas Levi, focus on the Korean Peninsula and North Korea can still be found within the halls and corridors of the Polish Academy.

Nicolas himself was the driving force behind the focus of this Yongusil, an extensive and informed gathering of academics and young scholars at the Polish Academy of Sciences on March 10, 2015. Meeting under the title “The Korean Peninsula in a global context. Opportunities and Challenges in the 21st Century,” the focus of those presenting stretched not only into the future, but far into the historical past, reliving past challenges as well as those of our current era.

Intriguing comparisons were the order of the day, it seemed. Young-mee Yu Cho, Associate Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures at Rutgers University, traced the shifting sands of Hanja usage and acceptance on both sides of the DMZ. Equally, Atur Jochlik, a PhD Candidate at the Silesian university of Katowice, delivered a most unique comparison between governmental and social forms found in Plato’s Republic and those of contemporary Pyongyang.

Korean nationalist and nationalism’s response to colonial attempts and processes to construct the colonial, imperial subject were carefully explored by Dr. Natalia Kim of the Higher School of Economics, Moscow in a paper entitled “A Conceptual Attitude to the Problem of Liberation in the Korean Nationalism.” Kim’s analysis of a “new nationalism” now past made for a fascinating counterpoint to the work of Sino-NK’s own Steven Denney, who addresses contemporary manifestations of nationalism–also called “new.” Perhaps rather less careful in its infant stage was Robert Winstanley-Chesters’ first public presentation of new work on the sporting and leisure spaces and places of the Korean Peninsula. Winstanley-Chesters tracing the ghosts of colonial physical culture into Kim Il-sung’s similarly physically determined North Korea of the 1970s.

Nicolas Levi himself, now of the Polish Academy of Sciences, on an important if perhaps disappointing day for Choe Ryong-hae and other figures in Pyongyang’s bureaucratic machine, carefully examined the ebb and flow of power in North Korea’s elite, alighting on a satisfying structural approach in contrast to the myopic urgency of so much “Pyongyanology.” Equally satisfying was the presentation of Theo Clement, a PhD Student at ENS Lyon in France. Focusing on the border spaces of North Korea’s northeast, the liminal edge of Pyongyang’s sovereign writ (so beloved of Sino-NK), Clement investigated the Special Economic Zones, so much the focus of recent academic fervor.

While it is debatable as to whether Pyongyang is engaged in any form of opening, we want to finally note in summary of this stimulating and challenging academic exercise the potentially revealing work in progress presented by Michal Lubina, Associate Professor at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow. Lubina’s focus on another once cosseted “hermit kingdom” of governmental and bureaucratic difficulty–Myanmar–and its interactions in a new era of openness with the Korean Peninsula. This work will one day be underpinned by a revealing documentary and evidential base when the archives of Yangon and Naypyidaw are opened. Perhaps Myanmar’s opening will prove prophetic or at least instructive when it comes to any future changes in governmentality north of the 38th parallel.

In his 2012 book, The Impossible State, Dr. Victor Cha admits that he still “marvels” at how North Korea has managed to survive though the country makes poor economic decisions, diverts much of its wealth to the Kim family, and engages in “the most threatening behavior in East Asia.” Cha is also keenly aware that the stability of the DPRK is due, in no small part, to China’s, seemingly steadfast but not entirely unwavering, support. The question is: Why does China continue to align itself with North Korea? and Cha’s answers to this question formed the lion’s share of his February 24th presentation, “North Korea’s Future – And What It Means for China and America,” a lecture within The Paulson Institute China Series at the University of Chicago.

China’s support of North Korea, according to Cha, is not an enactment of camaraderie. Rather, China perpetuates its DPRK relationship for the following three reasons. First, China has not given up hope that the Kim administration will enact top down economic reforms following the Chinese model. Second, China has long had a policy of “equidistance” between the two Korean nations, believing that equidistance is the key to stability in the region. Third is military history. China has had border disputes with every other territory surrounding it, but it worked out a stable border with North Korea decades ago since an unstable Korea has, historically, been bad for China. Thus, though Cha contends that China detests North Korea and that North Korea does not harbor warm feelings toward China, he unearthed strong rationales for the continuing economic and diplomatic bilateral relationships.

Cha further connected China’s justifications to three policy-driven goals. China’s short-term goal is focused on tactics, trying to keep North Korea from doing anything that might destabilize the region such as conducting more missile tests while also trying to get the senior leadership to return to the negotiating table. In the medium-term, China is concerned with its own investments in the coal and mineral extracting industries in the northern provinces of the DPRK, and in the long-term, China reiterates one of its main reasons for staying at North Korea’s side in the first place. Its long-term hope is that North Korea will eventually adopt economic reforms. Cha maintained that these aims do not reflect changes in Chinese strategy, and he likened China to a slow-moving aircraft carrier since China, indeed, trudges slowly when crafting policy change in regards to North Korea. Cha did not indicate that the United States is on the verge of putting forth policy changes either, but he did assert that the Obama administration wants to have diplomatic contact with North Korea. It wants a foot hold–even a toe hold–but North Korea will not relent.

Cha does not believe he will be marveling at North Korea’s existence much longer. He posits that North Korea’s politics are becoming more rigid while, at the same time, its society is becoming more market-driven and hungry for information from the outside world, an unsustainable combination. But for economic reforms to occur, Cha argues that China must cut off financial support to the DPRK to force it into a quandary where it must “reform or die.” He further believes that the best-case scenario would be to replace the personality cult leadership with a military dictatorship because at least this would allow for economic change. He admitted, after all, “You’re not going to get democracy in North Korea.”